


Fidelias

by Antosha



Series: The F Words [9]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adolescent Sexuality, Claustrophobia, Community: catchmysnitch, F/M, Facing Your Fears, Fidelius Charm (Harry Potter), Ginny Rescues Harry, Hogwarts, Hogwarts Chamber of Secrets, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Light BDSM, Luna Lovegood Being Luna Lovegood, Luna Lovegood is a Good Friend, Minor Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Post-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Post-War, Shrieking Shack, Teen Romance, The Deathly Hallows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:55:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24448465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antosha/pseuds/Antosha
Summary: What is Harry getting up to? And what is Ginny doing with that rope? (This fic takes place about two months after Folly.)
Relationships: Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Luna Lovegood/Rolf Scamander
Series: The F Words [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1761559
Kudos: 11





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Author/Artist's Notes: ithinkiamlost (whose art I love!) asked for Romance, humor, fluffy, and/or sexy... mystery/adventures and oh, the angst. I hope I'm delivering a bit of all of those. :-)

"And what do you have planned for the night, Ginny?" burbled Luna as we slipped down past the roots of the Whomping Willow and into the passage to Harry's house.  
  
"Don't know." I shivered; it was cool in the tunnel, but the place also gave me the collywobbles.  
  
"Oh, how nice," sighed Luna, lighting her wand. "That probably means lots of sex."  
  
I smiled, because that was Luna, but it was mostly habit. Yeah, sex was probably on the menu, and that was sure to be nice. But what else? What was Harry up to? In the two months since we'd got engaged, it was almost as if we'd spent less time together, instead of more. A lot of that was my NEWTs, of course, and try-outs for the Harpies, which had been amazing.  
  
But now I only had my end-of-year exams, which were always a joke for seventh years. On Friday, I’d be boarding the Hogwarts Express for the very last time. I was due to start with the Harpies the following Monday—and with the on-going threats by the remnants of the blood-purity fanatics against teams that _allowed_ Muggle-born players (like Harpies legend Gwenog Jones), the Ministry had insisted that all of the training camps be closed, and under tight security. Harry and I weren’t going to be seeing much of each other for the next few months. I would have thought that he’d have been as desperate to spend time with me as I was with him. But no: most nights for the previous two weeks, he’d begged off, telling me not to come out to the Shrieking Shack, where we’d been happily shagging in every renovated room for months.  
  
Not that night, though. At dinner that night, as I’d made my way out of the Great Hall past the Auror Cadet table that had been set up by the door, I’d leaned down to kiss him, as I did most meals. Only I may have whispered in his ear several really intriguing things that I wanted to try with him that night, and I might have told him that rope was involved, and I may very well have suggested that if he weren’t there when I arrived, he was the one who was going to spend the whole night trussed up like a Christmas goose. He’d shivered and spluttered that that sounded lovely, and that he had something that he needed to finish that night, but he thought he’d be able to be at the Shack by no later than nine that evening.  
  
It was only just gone eight as Luna and I climbed up into the basement of the no-longer Shrieking Shack. Breathing more freely now that we’d cleared the tunnel—I always hated being underground; can you blame me?—I climbed the stairs up to the butler’s pantry. “Yeah. Sex. If he’s a good boy, I’m going to let him tie me up.”  
  
“Oh?” Luna was beaming as we entered the kitchen. “Rolf likes that too. Or rather, he likes to tie me up. I don’t know whether he would enjoy tying you up. I shall have to ask him.”  
  
I laughed. “You do that!”  
  
“And if Harry is _not_ a good boy?”  
  
“Ah,” I answered with a grin, “then I’ll have to tie _him_ up.”  
  
“Yes. I suppose so.” Luna cocked her head. “I must say, however, that Rolf likes that even more than when he gets to tie me up. He is rather fond of being spanked, too, especially if I’m—”  
  
“ _Luna_!” Even in my state of preoccupation, I found myself blushing and laughing. “What happened to my innocent friend!”  
  
She considered very seriously before answering, “I did a lot of research.” Then she flashed a blissful smile. “Have fun with the bondage! Oh, and cast Glissare on the ropes. It is just as much fun but does not chafe anywhere nearly as much.”  
  
I smiled back, even as my mind continued to worry at Harry’s evasions and disappearances. “I’ll keep that in mind. Have fun with Rolf.” He was waiting for her at the Three Broomsticks. “And be here before six; we don’t want to get caught sneaking back in.”  
  
“No. It helps that I won’t be sleeping at all.” She spun and skipped toward the front door and then stopped, plucking something from the door handle. “Acromantula web. How interesting. I wonder what Harry has been doing in the forest.”  
  
“Me too,” I muttered. _The forest?_  
  
“No doubt he will explain when he meets you. Have fun!” Luna flitted through the door, leaving the shred of spider silk to waft slowly to the floor.  
  
“No doubt.” Luna was already gone. I walked over and picked up the sticky silk; it was matted with dust and leaves. _What the hell?_ Shrugging off my rucksack, I looked about, trying to see any other signs of where Harry might be, of what he might be up to.  
  
Another girl—of course that had been the first thought that my treacherous mind had offered up when he started begging off. Someone less scrawny, maybe, with a more even temper. Bigger tits. Susan? No. Like Harry, she was too busy training to be an Auror, and besides, she was chasing after Terry Boot. Certainly not Hermione, who was down in London quietly cohabiting with my brother (or at least, _secretly_ cohabiting—I couldn’t imagine those two doing anything _quietly_ ). If it were Luna, he’d have been here by now, and besides, Luna would have told me. She told me _everything_. Whether I wanted to hear it or not.  
  
Maybe Romilda Vane had got up to her old tricks again. Only I knew for a fact that Harry never ate or drank anything that she’d so much as glanced at without testing it first for traces of magic.  
  
I dropped the spider silk into the rubbish, cast a nostalgic glance at the table, on and under which we had had such fun in days gone by, grabbed my rucksack and stomped up the stairs toward the bedroom. If we were going to play games, I needed to get myself into a better mood, and putting on pretty silken underthings always helped my mood tremendously.  
  
They usually helped put Harry to rights too, for that matter.  
  
I usually have a sense of a room before I enter it. Mum calls it my knack—I call it a survival skill learned from growing up with way too many brothers in way too small a house. I’d always been able to get a feel for what was on the other side of any door.  
  
Not pausing at the door, I entered the master bedroom—I thought of it, very quietly, as our bedroom, though I still spent more nights in my four-poster up in Gryffindor Tower, especially during the previous two weeks. It was empty and quiet, but I knew without knowing why that there was something off as soon as I set foot in the room. I dropped my rucksack to the floor, silky underthings forgotten, and looked about, trying to see what it was that had my pulse racing.  
  
Everything was as neat as a pin—Kreacher always came up from Grimmauld Place to neaten up on school days. The bed was perfectly made, with a white rose in a bud vase on the nightstand. Turning to the closet, I opened the door: Harry’s robes were hanging just where they should; the few extras that I’d stowed there were demurely tucked at the back, away from the prying eyes of visiting mothers and headmistresses. Harry’s heavy boots were in their place; a tuft of Acromantula silk glimmered on one of the laces.  
  
Chewing on my lip, I meandered around the room. What had set my whiskers vibrating? I walked over to the bed and sat, trying to see what it was that had set me off.  
  
Shaking my head, I started to undo my tie. Clearly I had let my imagination run away with me. Time to get into my silkies in order to be ready for Harry—whether as his defenseless maiden or as his all-powerful mistress remained to be seen.  
  
I undid the top few buttons of my school shirt and threw my tie around the corner post at the head of the bed…  
  
That’s when I noticed: the secret compartment in the post was open. I felt inside, and was annoyed to find that it was empty.  
  
_Bugger_ , I thought.  
  
That compartment was one that Harry had shown me once—only once. The afternoon when we first made love, right there on that bed. We’d both been lying there—clinging to each other, to be honest—and he’d asked, “Can I show you something?”  
  
I said something stupid along the lines of “I thought you already had.”  
  
He grinned and we snogged for a bit, and then he said, “You remember the… the wand?”  
  
“The wand?”  
  
“The, you know, the Elder Wand.”  
  
For a moment I thought that we were talking “The Tale of the Three Brothers,” but then I remembered standing in that circle, the morning of the battle, my heart in my mouth, clutching Luna’s hand, listening to Harry talk about Voldemort’s wand—Dumbledore’s wand. Harry’s wand. I nodded.  
  
“Well,” he said, “I haven’t figured out what to do with it yet—how to hide it so that it can’t ever hurt anyone again.”  
  
I knew that Ron had tried to talk him out of hiding it or destroying it, but I understood why Harry would want to make sure that the Death Stick would never tempt another Dark Lord.  
  
“So,” he said, “I’ve hidden it here.” He tapped the corner post three times with his own holly wand and the door had sprung open revealing the long, pale wand that had caused so much trouble over the centuries. “I… I just thought I should tell you. I haven’t told anyone else—not even Ron or Hermione. But someone else should know, in case something happens….”  
  
“Nothing’s going to happen, Harry,” I said, slamming the little door shut and wrapping myself around him. “That’s all done with. No more.”  
  
And we’d made love again, and I hadn’t given the Elder Wand another thought.  
  
Now it was missing.  
  
What had happened? Had Harry taken it out to the woods to bury it? Had someone broken into the Shrieking Shack and stolen it?  
  
I found that I was standing, my wand in my hand, with no idea how I’d got there.  
  
Where can he be? I thought, looking about frantically. I pulled open the nightstand drawer.  
  
Empty. The Marauders’ Map was gone.  
  
_Bugger. Bugger. Bugger._  
  
I started to stride toward the door—I figured that if he had the Map, he must be at Hogwarts—when a bright apparition blocked my way: Harry’s Patronus, its antlers seeming to fill that whole side of the room. “I need help, Ginny,” it said in Harry’s voice. “I’m in the Chamber.”  
  
I ran through the stag and was back in the tunnel before it occurred to me to think that the Chamber of Secrets was the last place in the world that I ever wanted to be again.  
  
Harry was in danger. He had asked for my help.  
  
I was going to bloody well give it to him.


	2. Chapter 2

The Chamber of Secrets. It’s always lived it to its name—for me, at least.  
  
There are things that I remember about the Chamber that I’ve never told anybody—not even Harry.  
  
Nothing important—at least, that’s what I’d always told myself. What was important about what had happened to me down there Harry knew better than anyone: my mind had been taken away from me. I had been violated.  
  
Most of the time that I spent in the Chamber, I was fully possessed, and I couldn’t remember what I’d done—how I’d got myself covered in blood and chicken feathers, or why my robes were wet, or why I woke to myself once in the Gryffindor common room with the scent of Penelope Clearwater’s perfume in my nostrils.  
  
But bits and pieces have come to me in dreams over the years. The glint of the mirror that Hermione and Penelope were peering through when I set the Basilisk on them. The flash of Colin’s camera as he tried to record for everyone just what the monster was that was haunting the school. That dream woke me up screaming more than once in the months after Colin’s death.  
  
The sound of my mouth speaking in Parseltongue to the Basilisk, or ordering the doors of the Chamber to _open_. The sound of the huge serpent speaking to me.  
  
The sound of Tom’s voice, so warm at first, asking me about the things that I cared about. Leading my mind to places it would never have gone.  
  
Taunting me, as he became more and more real, and I faded more and more—my attempts to resist him increasingly desperate, but increasingly feeble.  
  
I can only be thankful that the sick bugger had no interest of his own in sex. As it is, it’s a miracle that losing myself in someone—even someone who cares for me as obviously as Harry does—doesn’t make me want to run howling into the night.  
  
Sometimes, when I wake from a dream, hearing _that voice_ whispering in my head ( _“Why would a boy like that love a scrawny little girl like you?_ ”), it does.  
  
Except during the nights that I wake to find Harry curled up beside me. Then I just lie there, my heart pounding. clenching my teeth to keep the sound of my sobbing from waking him.  
  
I flew through the halls of the school, hoping that I would see someone that I could send for help, but of course, the place was empty; the dueling club finals were that night, so everyone would be down in the Great Hall.  
  
As I reached Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom, I stopped short. That knack of mine was suddenly screaming at me: there was something on the other side of the door that I _knew_ I didn’t want to face.  
  
But Harry needed me. And the only way down to the Chamber was through that bathroom. Pulling my wand from my rucksack ( _When did I pick that up again?_ ), I kicked open the door and peered in.  
  
There was a dim spectral shape crouched at the base of the sink that served as the entrance to the tunnel that led Chamber. A thick, greasy, malevolent _feeling_ rolled off of it, like the worst dungbomb imaginable.  
  
Whatever the thing was, it wasn’t Mytle. She was wailing from her toilet. “Make it go away! I don’t want it here!”  
  
“What _is_ it?” I muttered, doing my best just to stay in the room.  
  
“Dunno. Don’t want to know,” howled Myrtle.  
  
“Some Ravenclaw you are,” I muttered, wand raised, forcing one foot forward and then another. “Go on,” I shouted at the thing. “Get out of here!”  
  
The thing didn’t move, but it hissed at me, and the hiss sounded nauseatingly familiar.  
  
“ _Go,_ ” I answered in Parseltongue—the first part of the command that brought so many of my nightmares to their gut-twisting conclusion. I managed to hold back the second part of the order, though: _attack._  
  
The thing slithered away: not as shiny as most ghosts, small, vaguely human, deformed. A child. It snarled at me from the corner but it kept its distance as I approached the sink.  
  
I was about to tell Myrtle to fetch Professor McGonagall when I heard the toilet flush. _Thanks a lot, Myrtle_ , I thought.  
  
Keeping the corner of an eye on the grotesque abortion of a ghost, I walked up to the sink with the serpent mark scratched into it and hissed, “ _Open_.”  
  
The sink slid aside, revealing a black pit that even my nightmares apparently hadn’t done justice to. I couldn’t remember how I’d got down before, but the idea of just jumping...  
  
Don’t get me wrong: put me up in the air and I’ll do anything I have to. Ron swears I had to play for the Harpies, because I was already half madwoman and half bird to begin with.  
  
But underground? I hate being underground. Can you blame me?  
  
“ _Lumos_ ,” I cried, and stared into the hole. The bottom was still black. _What I wouldn’t give for a length of..._  
  
With a laugh of annoyance at myself, I dropped my rucksack, opened it and pulled out the coil of thick, red satin cord that I’d bought with bit of my signing bonus. _Holds anything—or anyone—for as long as they want to be held!_ claimed the adverts for Madam Coraline’s Restraints for Romantics. _Well,_ I thought, _we’re about to find out just how good your charms are, Coraline, luv._  
  
Wrapping one end of the rope around the iron column of the sink next to the one that usually covered the hole, I touched it and said, “ _Lashio._ ” As when I’d practiced, the rope promptly tied itself into a very imposing, sturdy-looking knot.  
  
The rest of the rope began to slither its way around my wrist, but I slapped at it—“Stop that!”—and it sloughed away. I dropped the rope down into the hole and was relieved to hear what sound like the rope hitting stones at the bottom.  
  
I pulled at the rope with all of my strength. The knot held.  
  
As I dropped over the edge, my lit wand clutched in my mouth, climbing my way down through the dank darkness, I thought, _Right, Potter. When I find you and get you out of this, I’m going to tie you up for real. No more of these fun and games!_  
  
I knew better though: I was the idiot who’d fallen in love with Harry Potter. Whatever his strengths as a man, as a boyfriend—as, Merlin help us, a future husband—leading a boring, stay-at-home life wasn’t likely to be one of them.  
  
I reached the end, and a vague memory resurfaced: bones. Rat bones. Mice. Moles. Badgers. Snakes. Staring up, I decided to let the rope stay where it was; no hope of Fawkes flying us up again this time. I tried not to look too closely at the floor as I crunched my way toward where I knew without knowing that the Chamber of Secrets lay.  
  
Behind me, I felt the rotting, noisome presence of the ghost-child moving behind me, staying just out of my wand’s light.  
  
Nearly sprinting down the tunnel, I saw an enormous snakeskin glittering in my wandlight, and for the first time a memory came to me that wasn’t washed in the garish colors of nightmares. I remembered Harry and me finding Ron here with that oblivious prat, Professor Lockheart. Around the next turn, a wall of rock showed where the backfire from Ron’s wand had collapsed the tunnel but there, up at the top, was the narrow passage that my brother had cleared for us to get through.  
  
Have I said that I hate being underground? Yeah. Well, I _really_ hate enclosed spaces. Tight, enclosed spaces.  
  
But Harry...  
  
Biting my lip and gripping my wand, I climbed up the face of the rockslide and entered the narrow channel that Ron had opened up—and that he must have widened to get back in and out when he and Hermione went hunting for the Basilisk’s fangs just before the battle. If Ron could do it—hell, if _Hermione_ could do it, _I_ could bloody well get through.  
  
I may have been determined, but that didn’t mean that I didn’t have to stop once I’d climbed through and sit, gasping for air in the relatively open space of the tunnel beyond.  
  
The _thing_ was gibbering up in the passage, just out of sight.  
  
 _Harry. Right._  
  
I got up and started to run again, but didn’t have far to go. There stood an enormous pair of doors with a pair of intricate stone snakes carved on the front. Raising my wand once again, I hissed, “ _Open!_ ” and sprinted back into the Chamber of Secrets for the first time since Harry had helped me free myself from Tom.  
  
I asked Luna once how she had managed to stay sane—well, as sane as Luna could ever have claimed to have been—during those long months as Voldemort’s captive in the Malfoys’ cellar. She’d smiled her Luna smile, reminded me that she’d had Mr. Ollivander to talk to, told me that she’d spent much of the time considering possible locations where they might track down the Snorkack herds at last (as of course she had helped Rolf do just that spring). “But,” she said, “mostly I thought of you lying alone in the Chamber of Secrets, fighting off Tom Riddle’s attempts to possess you.”  
  
When I told her that seemed like an awful thing to be thinking about—I certainly thought about it as little as I could—she said, “Oh, but I found it a very hopeful image. You fought for so long. And after all, Harry did come for you.”  
  
As he had come for her, even i. As I was coming for him.  
  
“ _Open!_ ” I ran into the place where I had failed so badly in so many ways all of those years ago.  
  
Another monstrous snakeskin lay at the far end of the Chamber, its jewel-colored shape bulky and battered: the Basilisk’s corpse.  
  
In front of it, a figure in dark robes lay on the ground, a bright light flaring near the end of its outstretched hand.  
  
“Harry! Oh, Merlin,” I gasped, falling to my knees beside his motionless form. He held a wand in either hand; his holly wand dangled from the limp fingers of his left, while his right seemed to thrust the Elder Wand into the heart of a blindingly bright rip in space. “Harry! Don’t be... Oh, please don’t be...!”  
  
“He is still alive, Miss Weasley,” said a low, sneering voice that I had never thought to hear again. I blinked up in surprise. At the edge of the circle of blazing light cast by the Elder Wand stood the shockingly solid, shockingly young figure of Severus Snape. “But only just.”


	3. Chapter 3

“All right, you son of a bitch,” I snarled, my wand pointed straight at where Snape had supposedly once had a heart, “tell me where the bloody Horcrux is, and I won’t shove it up your arse before I destroy it with one of that Basilisk’s fangs.”  
  
The late headbastard’s eyebrows arched, but before he could answer there was a laugh behind me that sent me spinning. “Bloody hell, Ginny! He’s already dead—what’re you going to do, kill him _again?”_ Fred stood there, big as life, smirking like the bugger he always was.  
  
“Can’t blame a girl for trying though, can you, Forge?” Tonks leaned her elbow up on his shoulder; the last time I’d seen her, she’d been beautifully enormous, but now she looked the way she had the summer I’d met her: lean, grinning and with hair that clashed painfully with Fred’s dragonhide coat. “Wotcher, Gin.”  
  
“Well,” said Colin, who was standing at Fred’s other elbow, “if anyone could manage it, it would be Ginny.” He flashed a bright smile that hit me like a kick in the stomach.  
  
“Believe me,” groaned Snape behind me, “she did her best to kill me all of last year. You made my already thoroughly unpleasant life an utter hell.”  
  
“What...?” I spluttered, straining to pull together a coherent thought. Grabbing the hem of Harry’s robes, I turned back to Fred. “What are you doing here?”  
  
Fred gave his Fred shrug—the one that always let me know he wasn’t George. “Oh, Harry-arse there wanted a palaver with us.”  
  
“And with Professor Moody too,” added Colin.  
  
Tonks snorted, “Yeah. But Mad Eye wouldn’t stay if that prat there—” She flicked her chin at Snape. “—was here. So he scarpered off.”  
  
“H... Harry? Summoned you?”  
  
“Yes, Miss Weasley,” said Snape, with his usual, aggrieved air of having to explain the obvious to someone really dim—as if anyone could have swallowed what was going on there better than I was doing. “Rather than simply complete the task that he’d set for himself, the Boy Who Couldn’t Manage to Die Properly decided in a typical fit of Potter sentiment that he had to speak to each of us—or rather all of us. It was bad enough to have my afterlife disturbed; but to be pulled back into this vale of dreariness in the company these... Gryffindors.”  
  
“Oi!” barked Tonks, waving one hand. “Hufflepuff, thank you very much!”  
  
“Hat wanted to put me in Ravenclaw,” Fred said to Colin. “Didn’t seem like enough of a challenge, though.” They both nodded solemnly.  
  
“What...?” I could feel what little grip I still had rapidly slipping. I looked down at Harry, the Elder Wand in his hand jammed into that blinding light. Tucked between his palm and the wand’s handle was a small, black stone.  
  
I could just see the silvery _not-there-_ ness of that ever-so-useful Invisibility Cloak, shoved with the Marauders’ Map into his bag. And the wand. And...  
  
I said some words my mother wouldn’t have stood for, even under extreme circumstances. Looking down at my fiancé’s slack face, I gasped, “He’s the Master of Death.”  
  
“Fairytale nonsense,” spat Snape.  
  
“Well, Professor,” pointed out Colin cheerfully, “he did call all of us back from the Other Side. You have to admit, that is pretty impressive.”  
  
I’d never heard a sniff as dismissive as the one Snape answered with.  
  
“Yeah, Severus, my old lad?” said Fred. “Got somewhere you’d rather be?”  
  
“Anywhere,” muttered Snape, but not before Tonks had whispered loudly, “Lily still won’t talk to him.”  
  
“Serves you right,” I growled at the late headmaster’s shade. “Between the way you treated her and the way you treated her son, I shouldn’t think you’d see her good side any time this century. And yeah, Harry and I don’t have secrets.” Which wasn’t, strictly speaking, true. “I know you helped him. Didn’t stop you from making his life hell.”  
  
It was a kind of nostalgic treat to see Snape reduced to scowling.  
  
I touched my fingers to Harry’s throat. He was breathing, and his heart was beating. That was something, anyway. I looked back up at the solitary figure on the edge of the bright, magical light emanating from the tip of Harry’s wand. “You said he hadn’t finished what he was here to do. What? What’s happened to him?”  
  
“Why should I tell you?”  
  
“Because if you do, that century might not last so long, but if you don’t, I’m going to see just how much damage I can actually do to a conjured spirit.” I had my wand once again pointed at the middle of his chest.  
  
“Hmm. A very Gryffindor approach.” Snape didn’t look particularly worried, but his eyes never left my wand. “I once thought you capable of more subtlety.”  
  
“Believe me,” barked Fred from behind me, “she can be plenty subtle. Right up to the point where she hits you between the eyes like a Bludger.”  
  
Tonks snorted. Colin said, “Harry was casting a Fidelius Charm.”  
  
“A…?”  
  
Bloody hell, I thought. Suddenly it all made sense: the evasiveness, the exhaustion: this was something he’d had to do alone: to hide the Elder Wand. To hide the Deathly Hallows. In the one place that just about no one could ever get into. _Bloody hell._  
  
“So much,” said Snape, “for not having any secrets.”  
  
“Yeah,” I muttered, “but this is one I understand. I don’t like it, but I sure as hell understand it.” I looked down at him. Here we should have been up in our bedroom, playing with rope, and poor Harry was down here trying to save the world again. “What happened?”  
  
“Your boyfriend there rushed in as always where he had no business treading. The Fidelius Charm is a notoriously difficult spell.”  
  
I was going to bark at the bastard, but Tonks beat me to it. “Come on, Severus. He’d done a great job on it. You said so yourself, before—”  
  
Snape crossed his arms tightly. “Before he bumbled into the most elementary error that can be made with the Fidelius Charm. If he hadn’t thought that the laws of magic didn’t apply to such a Chosen One as he, he would have realized that there was a reason that the caster of the charm can never be the Secret Keeper.”  
  
“What?”  
  
Now Snape smiled—that smug, condescending smirk that he’d been torturing Weasleys with for at least the previous decade and a half. “It is one of the basic prohibitions involved in casting a Fidelius. As Potter aught to have known if he had done the research required actually to cast the spell.”  
  
I ran my fingertips along Harry's chin. “I bet he was trying to make sure that if someone killed him to become the wand’s master, the secret died with him.”  
  
“Nonetheless,” sniffed Snape, “a typically arrogant, typically sloppy mistake.”  
  
I started to reach for the Elder Wand, to pull it out of that blinding, dimensionless point of brilliance. Why? I can’t tell you. Maybe I thought if I dispelled that light—  
  
“Don’t.” Snape and Fred said it together. I stopped. Fred continued, unusually serious: “He created a paradox; when he started to cast the last bits of the Charm to place the Chamber under the Fidelias, it started to rip itself out of the real world. Harry was only able to stop it by jamming the wand in there.”  
  
Colin chuckled. “Like the Dutch boy sticking his finger in the dyke.”  
  
I had long ago got used to him and Dean and Hermione—and Harry—saying things that made absolutely no sense unless you’d been told some Muggle story as a kid.  
  
Tonks peered at my brother. “How d’you know so much about the bloody Fidelius? It’s beyond the level of most of the Aurors I ever knew. Remus understood the theory, but he never felt he could manage the actual spell, more’s the pity.”  
  
When Fred shrugged, I answered for him. “Fred was always good at charms. So… he’s holding the Chamber in the real world?”  
  
Fred shrugged again, but nodded.  
  
“And is that why he’s… passed out?”  
  
“Yeah,” said Tonks. “He was able to get the Patronus off; he knew you were the only one with a chance of getting down here. But then he fainted.”  
  
“Be that as it may,” said Snape, “unless he can awake, he cannot complete the spell. And if he does not wake soon, the effort of holding the fissure together will claim him. A ridiculous waste of his own life. As I said: sloppy and arrogant.”  
  
I looked down at Harry; he was pale and clammy, and it felt as if each heartbeat was fainter than the last. _Bloody hell, Harry,_ I found myself thinking, _can’t you go even one year without almost dying?_ Of course, in that moment, I wasn’t at all certain that there was any _almost_ in the offing.  
  
I shivered, and it was a moment before I realized that it wasn’t because of the cool air or the prospect of Harry dying—again. The deformed ghost-child was standing just inside of the entrance to the Chamber, snarling at us like a rabid dog.  
  
“Shut up, Tom,” said Fred.  
  
I blinked. “Tom?”  
  
“Yeah,” said Tonks. “he doesn’t like us invading his lurk.”  
  
Tom. I remembered the story that Harry had told me of his conversation with Dumbledore in the ghostly railway station. The gibbering thing… “ _Stay_ ,” I hissed. “ _We will go._ ”  
  
The thing slinked into the shadows.  
  
“Ginny could finish it,” Fred murmured, his voice still low and serious as I had so rarely heard it in life. “She could be the Secret Keeper.”  
  
I waited for a sneer or a comment from Snape, but none came. When I looked up at him, he was standing, a finger to his lips, considering. “She could detach the fool boy’s hand from the wand, leaving it in place. Take him outside. Complete the spell. Yes. That might work.”  
  
“Once the stone was out of his hand, we’d have to go,” pointed out Tonks.  
  
“At last,” said Snape with a sigh, “a silver lining.”  
  
“What’s the spell?” I asked as I once again began to reach toward Harry’s wand hand.  
  
“Simple,” Fred said. “The wand movement’s just a Caracker loop, just like—”  
  
“—the Shield Charm,” Tonks, Colin and I said together. It had been one of the first things that Harry had taught the DA.  
  
“And the incantation,” added Snape, “is _Fidelias occultis_. You must concentrate—and this is essential—on hiding the Chamber of Secrets. Do not forget this.’”  
  
“Right,” I said. “Got it.” I wrapped my fingers around Harry’s.  
  
“Good luck, Ginny,” said Colin, clearly saying goodbye.  
  
“Give Teddy a hug for me,” said Tonks, her voice warm and sad.  
  
In spite of the urgency of the moment, I felt myself start to tear up. “S-so sorry, Tonks.”  
  
“Don’t be. I’ve seen you and Harry and my mum with him. He’s a lucky boy to have you lot.”  
  
I just nodded and started to pry Harry’s hand away from the wand and the stone. Snape was standing there, a nostril raised in eloquent disgust. “Professor,” I said, because I knew I needed to, “you were a right bastard and a terrible teacher. But I know you weren’t as hard on us as you might have been last year, and I know you helped Harry. So thank you for that.”  
  
“Just promise me,” he said, turning away as Harry’s grip loosened and beginning to disappear, “that you won’t name any children after me.”  
  
“Professor, I swear that no child of mine shall ever, ever have the given name Severus.”  
  
He gave a grunt in acknowledgment, and then he was gone.  
  
I gently twisted Harry’s hand and it released the wand, which remained hanging in mid-air from the rift.  
  
The Resurrection Stone slipped from his palm; I caught it before it hit the ground.  
  
“Bye, Ginny,” said Tonks and Colin. Like Snape, they turned and faded like shadows in a dream.  
  
Fred stood there still, smiling again. “You didn’t say anything about middle names, now did you?”  
  
“Funny,” I said, smiling as I stood and cast a quick _Mobilicorpus_ on Harry, “it must have slipped my mind.”  
  
“That’s my sister,” he chuckled, and it’s funny: the chuckle was more devastating than anything else he could have done. “Listen, Ginny: tell George to have a good time, okay?”  
  
“Okay.” I checked Harry’s pulse at his throat again; it was already stronger.  
  
“And tell the Boy Who Bonked here not to have too good a time, thank you very much.”  
  
“Nope.” I looked over at the wand, suspended six inches in the air in a seam of starburst. “I won’t be telling him any such thing. Prat.”  
  
“Well, all I can say is I don’t want little Albus Severus showing up any time soon, you know?”  
  
“ _Albus Severus?_ ” I looked at him again, and I couldn’t help it: we both started to laugh. “Merlin! They’d both be… I mean, imagine their faces!”  
  
We both howled some more.  
  
Then the light at the tip of the wand flared and the floor beneath me shook.  
  
“Go, Gin,” said Fred.  
  
“We miss you.”  
  
“I’m always right here.” He smiled.  
  
I nodded and put down the Stone. He faded away as if he’d never been there at all.  
  
As I Levitated Harry out the door, the noxious presence was suddenly nearby again. As soon as we were back in the tunnel, Tom Riddle’s ghost—or I guess, what was left of Tom Riddle’s ghost—was in the door, doing its best to hiss menacingly at us. It was pathetic. _If ever anyone was too scared to go on to the Other Side, it was you,_ I thought, but I simply hissed the order, “ _Stay_ _!_ ” and then “ _Close!_ ”  
  
The shade of what had once been the greatest Dark Lord in centuries looked relieved as the doors swung shut between us. The Chamber of Secrets was sealed.  
  
I lowered Harry to the floor, thinking through the steps of the spell that I needed to perform.  
  
The walls rumbled again; sparks of that bright netherlight where flaring from the edges of the doors.  
  
I stood, my wand raised, and visualized Harry’s Invisibility Cloak covering the whole of the Chamber—of the whole structure disappearing entirely. When the image was clear in my mind, I performed the wand movement that I’d learned from Harry a lifetime before, and spoke: “ _Fidelias occultis_.”  
  
I looked up, expecting the doors to have disappeared. But of course, they were still there—they would be, since I was the Secret Keeper. Even so, the sparks of light and rumbling had stopped.  
  
I turned my wand on Harry. “Envervate.”  
  
He groaned once, and then his eyes flew open. “Ginny!” He sat up and clutched his head. “Bloody hell. Must have… Must have… hit my head.”  
  
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” I said, kneeling down to him.  
  
“Thank god you came,” he said, his hand cupping my cheek. “I was trying to hide…” He frowned and then started to look around. “The Elder Wand. The Resurrection Stone. What happened to them?”  
  
To test the spell, and out of sheer curiosity, I pointed at the carved doors of the Chamber. “They’re right over there.”  
  
“There?” He scowled in the direction of the doors, and then blinked up at me again. “That’s… There’s nothing but rock there, Ginny.”  
  
_It worked._ “Cave-in. That’s how you hit your head. I got you out just in time.” Which was, in a way, close enough to the truth.  
  
“Wow.” He stared at where I could plainly see the intricate stonework serpents guarding the Chamber that would finally be truly Secret. “Thank you, Ginny. I… I could have died.”  
  
“No, you couldn’t have,” I said. “Because then I would have to kill you.”  
  
He grinned at me, and pulled me into a kiss.  
  
Just at the point where the snogging was starting to get interesting, he stopped. “We should get out of here. In case of another cave-in.”  
  
“I suppose.”  
  
“Besides,” he said, pulling me to my feet, “I seem to remember some sort of promise about tying up…?”  
  
“Ah,” I said, “well, I had to use the rope to get down here, so I suppose we do need to head back up after all if I’m going to administer your punishment for being a naughty boy.”  
  
“Naughty? Me?” The poor boy actually had the decency to look ashamed.  
  
“You’ve been keeping things from me Harry. For that, you get punished. Mind, I don’t think you’ll mind this punishment too much.”  
  
“I bet not.” He grinned sheepishly. Adorably. “I… I’m sorry, Ginny. I needed to hide the Wand and the Stone.”  
  
I nodded, but there couldn’t keep the annoyance out of my voice as I said, “But I’m leaving on Friday. And the Harpies camp is going to be shut up as tight as…” _As the Chamber of Secrets_. “We aren’t going to be able to see each other for months. Didn’t that matter to you at all?”  
  
“Ah,” he said, once again looking like a boy who’s been caught sneaking sweets. “See, I got my first assignment. It starts Monday.”  
  
“So you thought, since we’d both be busy, it didn’t matter if we didn’t spend these last few weeks together?” In spite of my relief that he was okay—in spite of everything—I felt my anger rising.  
  
“See…” He stopped. “Erm… See, I was going to have kind of a surprise for you.”  
  
_Oh_. “Well, that’s very nice, Harry. But I was getting worried. Thought you might be off snogging Romilda. Or Myrtle.”  
  
“No one but you,” he said, taking both of my hands in his.  
  
My fury melted away, but I wasn’t willing to give up entirely. “Fine. What about this surprise, then?”  
  
“Well, see… My first assignment?”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Susan and I… We’re the security detail for the Harpies’ training camp.” He peered at me, fidgeting.  
  
“You mean… You’re going to be making sure no one else gets in?”  
  
“Yup.” Now he was starting to smile again.  
  
I was too. “And you’re going to be stationed in Holyhead?”  
  
“Yup. Twenty-four, seven. Housed in the training facility.” He bounced his eyebrows. “I’m going to be the only wizard in the whole compound.”  
  
“And how many witches will be under your _special_ protection, Potter?”  
  
Now he was grinning. “Just one. She’s more than enough for me.”  
  
“Glad to hear it!”  
  
We snogged again for a bit. But honestly, tunnels aren’t my favorite places when it comes to romance. Well, when it comes to anything. "Come on," I said. "Let's go."  
  
Soon enough we were back at the bottom of Madam Coraline’s satin rope. “Very nice,” said Harry.  
  
“Thank you. I hope you’ll enjoy it even more later.”  
  
“I’m sure I will.” He squeezed my hand. “I’m sorry, Ginny. No more secrets.”  
  
I nodded, looking back down the tunnel. “No more secrets.”  
  
And then we climbed.  
  
  


  
_~FIN~_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Fidelias" means "the true/faithful one." It's also the name of a great character in Jim Butcher's _Codex Alera_ books. :-)


End file.
